Official selection
Fantasporto Film Festival 2021
Sitges Film Festival 2020
Writer
Seth A. Smith, Darcy Spidle
Cast
Anna Hopkins, Michael Ironside, Kristin Langille, Simon Mutabazi, Chik White
Cinematographer
Kevin A. Fraser
contact
CUT/OFF/TAIL Pictures
A fungal infection by the name of Coral is ravaging wintry Eastern Canada, and the rest of the world. Leading parasitologist Fret (Anna Hopkins) is working on ways to control the strange life-form when she is brutally kidnapped. Intubated and weak, she wakes up in life-suspension chamber – a human-sized tin can – placed in a dark and damp brutalist facility where others are seemingly enduring the same fate. Who put her there and to what end? What brave new world awaits outside? As she struggles to escape and learn of her fellow inmates’ similar predicaments, unresolved trauma comes bubbling up the surface of her mind and might just hold the key to her freedom.
Canadian genre experimentalist Seth A. Smith (LOWLIFE, THE CRESCENT) returns to the Camera Lucida section with this timely yet thoroughly unpredictable science-fiction-cum-survival thriller. A confrontation with extreme isolation that speaks to our current moment, TIN CAN transmogrifies into a delight for the senses: a marvel of SF design with a painterly, synesthetic approach to plot. Channeling various influences and a rich history of B-movie resourcefulness, evoking works as varied as David Cronenberg’s early films (look out for Michael Ironside!), Albert Pyun’s one-location experiments and Yoshihiro Nishimura’s gory spectacles, TIN CAN evolves steadfastly from an experiment in claustrophobia into… something rather slimier and unclassifiable (with outstanding SFX by Allan Cooke). Most importantly, it never sacrifices the profoundly human core of its storytelling, which will resonate long after Fret’s confinement. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
Showings
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